January 25, 2017

"Peril" has never been so funny

In an unintentionally hilarious column this morning, the NYT's Ross Douthat tees it up:

Republicans should give serious consideration to the proposal that Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Senator Susan Collins of Maine have just put forward as a possible health care reform alternative.

The essence of Cassidy-Collins, and the reason that many Republicans don’t like it, is that it isn’t actually a full Obamacare replacement. Instead, it’s a federalist compromise. It lets individual state governments decide whether they want to stick with Obamacare or not, which would mean that the law would remain intact in most blue states for the time being, while redder states would have the opportunity to turn roughly the same amount of money (95 percent) to a different end … [that is,] a subsidy to cover the cost of a catastrophic health insurance plan, plus a directly funded health savings account to cover primary care.

Then, the punchline:

The peril is that there would be too wide a gap between what the money in your health savings account covers and what you need before your catastrophic coverage kicks in. In which case many people with consistent health care costs for chronic problems would rack up impossible medical bills in short order.

"The peril." Oh the peril of it all, as opposed to the bloody certainty that "many people … would rack up impossible medical bills in short order."

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"Peril" has never been so funny

In an unintentionally hilarious column this morning, the NYT's Ross Douthat tees it up:

Republicans should give serious consideration to the proposal that Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Senator Susan Collins of Maine have just put forward as a possible health care reform alternative.

The essence of Cassidy-Collins, and the reason that many Republicans don’t like it, is that it isn’t actually a full Obamacare replacement. Instead, it’s a federalist compromise. It lets individual state governments decide whether they want to stick with Obamacare or not, which would mean that the law would remain intact in most blue states for the time being, while redder states would have the opportunity to turn roughly the same amount of money (95 percent) to a different end … [that is,] a subsidy to cover the cost of a catastrophic health insurance plan, plus a directly funded health savings account to cover primary care.

Then, the punchline:

The peril is that there would be too wide a gap between what the money in your health savings account covers and what you need before your catastrophic coverage kicks in. In which case many people with consistent health care costs for chronic problems would rack up impossible medical bills in short order.

"The peril." Oh the peril of it all, as opposed to the bloody certainty that "many people … would rack up impossible medical bills in short order."